208 SEX 



psychical characters are inherited in the same 

 way, and at the same rate as the physical. 



Thirdly, we would guard against the tempta- 

 tion to sum up the contrast of the sexes in 

 epigrams. We regard the woman as the 

 relatively more anabolic, man as the relatively 

 more katabolic; and whether this biological 

 hypothesis be a good one or not, it certainly 

 does no social harm. But when investigators 

 begin to say that woman is more infantile and 

 man more senile ; that woman is " undeveloped 

 man " and man an evolved woman ; we get 

 among generalisations crude if not unscientific 

 and practically dangerous. Not least dan- 

 gerous of these generalisations is one of the 

 most familiar, that man is more variable than 

 woman, that the raw materials of evolution 

 make their appearance in greatest abundance 

 in man. There seems to be no secure basis 

 for this generalisation; it is still doubtful 

 whether any generalisation of the kind is 

 feasible. Karl Pearson has made seventeen 

 groups of measurements of different parts of 

 the body; in eleven groups the female is 

 more variable than the male, and in six the 

 male is more variable than the female. More- 

 over, the differences of variability are slight, 

 less than those between members of the same 

 race living in different conditions. Further- 

 more an elementary remark may be pardoned. 

 Since inheritance is bi -parental, and since 

 variation means some peculiarity in the inherit- 

 ance, a greater variability in men, if true, 

 would not mean that men as such had any 

 credit for varying. The stimulus to variation 



